The Mozilla Firefox development team started to check the Flash plugin version of Firefox web browsers on the What’s New page after Firefox updates recently. This page would inform users if the Flash plugin version of their web browser was not the latest one which usually meant that their web browser was open for attacks that would target vulnerabilities in outdated Flash versions. The website would describe the problem to the user and offer a solution in the form of a download link to the latest Flash plugin at the Adobe website.
The idea came up to extend this check to include other popular plugins as well. A first version of that plugin checker is now online and available at a test server which can be publicly accessed by anyone.
The scripts on the page will check for installed plugins and compare the version of the installed plugin with the latest version that is offered officially by the developer of the plugin. Supported are at the moment (among others) Apple Quicktime, Shockwave Flash, Adobe Acrobat, Java, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player plugins.
Plugins are either rated as safe or potentially vulnerable (there might be a third rating for vulnerable plugins). An update button is displayed next to potentially vulnerable plugins which should lead to a download page to update the latest version of the plugin. Some plugins do not reveal their full version which means that they will be shown as potentially vulnerable even if the latest version is installed.
Users who want to check out the Mozilla Plugin Check server right now can do so by visiting this link. They should know that the web browser will detect an invalid certificate and ignore it if they wish to continue. The plugin check website is working partially if other web browsers are used to connect to it.
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Main Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape 9.1.0.163, Microsoft® Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin 1.0.0.8 and Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library 3.0.2.629 are up to date, but this Mozilla plug-in check website is saying to me that there are potentially vulnerable and that i have to update? Any body else with the same experience? Martin do you have any thoughts about this?
Paulus as I said in the article: Some plugins do not report their full version which leads to the potentially dangerous rating even if you have the latest version installed.
The site uses an invalid ssl certificate and firefox won’t let you go there.
And if i do go there, clicking “update” doesn’t do anything?
The certificate is checked by”perpectives” addon ,but the plugin check has a problem at least with adobe plugin.
Anyway it’s a good ideea by mozilla team.